


castles made of glass

by GuardianKarenTerrier



Category: Tales of Berseria
Genre: Camping, Dysfunctional Family, Families of Choice, Gen, Pirates, Team as Family, honestly more a character study than anything, sand castles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2018-09-07
Packaged: 2019-07-08 01:37:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15920274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GuardianKarenTerrier/pseuds/GuardianKarenTerrier
Summary: But Magilou is cackling and composing loud, over-dramatic poems to the lost castle of glass with the occasional interjection by Bienfu, and Eizen has given up arguing with Rokurou and is stubbornly building an identical new castle next to the old one with Laphicet's renewed help, and Velvet has pulled out a ledger and is going over their supplies and costs with a faint frown. Their group is rather more organized than Eleanor had ever expected.She tries one more time to convince herself that she can't think of them this way, she has to remember that they're- they're daemons and pirates and malakhim, thieves and murderers and tools.She knows she's failing, watching the light spark off the glassed castle, multicolored from Rokurou's shells, bright with scavenged sea glass, and not the sort of thing she'd ever expect her enemies to sit down and create.  A sand castle isn't functional, or necessary, or strategic, or reasonable; it's just fun. It was only ever for fun.





	castles made of glass

**Author's Note:**

> the shanty dyle and laphicet are singing is voltaire's this ship's going down

Dyle is teaching Laphicet another sea shanty. 

Maybe it would be easier to reconcile her new situation if they hadn't met back up with the Van Eltia's crew. 

They are unmistakably pirates, yes, and some of them- most of them- seem to have adopted that as the whole of their identity; but they're also too undeniably human. They're not like Magilou, who Eleanor can rationalize to herself as being either too strange to know the dangers of consorting with daemons, or too arrogant to care, or possibly both. It's still true that Aifread's pirates don't have much of a sense of proportionate danger, or they wouldn't follow Velvet and Eizen, but they joke and quarrel and work together much as the acolytes ever had.  If she's being honest, they're much better at working together than the acolytes have ever truly been. 

Though they call themselves Aifread's still, they do follow Velvet _and_ Eizen both- somewhere in this crew, in this strange and somewhat unholy team, there is a chain of command, but Eleanor doesn't know it, can't puzzle it out. They don't _command_ , is the terrible, confusing heart of it; they _ask_. They can be refused. 

Not by her, not anymore, but they can be refused.

Some of the pirates _do_ refuse, in fact, laughing and shouting rude insults, and Eizen only smiles and threatens and doesn't often follow through, and Velvet rolls her eyes and snarls and threat-displays but ultimately she lets them be and- Eleanor recalls the acolytes again.  She recalls that refusing wasn't- well. No one refused their tasks. Certainly no one used the kind of language Dyle and the rest of the crew does, and even if they had she can't imagine they'd do it right to the face of someone higher ranked than themselves. 

Magistrates do not take well to dissension in the ranks. Velvet and Eizen almost seem to encourage it. Rokurou has been very clear that he follows Velvet, but he argues with her frequently, and she listens to him surprisingly well and often.  Magilou is clearly under no one's command nor do they wish her to be. And Laphicet- well.  She's seen entirely human children indulged far less than the way Eizen and the daemons look after Laphicet. 

Eleanor has to keep reminding herself of the terrible things she _knows_ Velvet and Rokurou, at the very least, have done, because the pirates clearly see no problem with anyone who's joined their crew. They don't even seem to mind _her_ , although they can't be fond of praetors, and they can't have been warned. 

For some reason, Eleanor had expected they'd all go straight to quarters once they were on board. That's been her usual experience with Abbey ships, after all. That's not at all what happens when they board the Van Eltia. 

Eizen goes off with Benwick immediately, explaining about Kurogane in a low voice as he goes while Benwick makes interested noises back, and Rokurou heads to the helm because if she heard him right he's been learning sea routes from the current helmsman. Velvet wordlessly hands Laphicet a book she found in town before following Eizen. 

Laphicet looks around, gives Eleanor an apologetic smile, and runs off to ask the sailors how he can help cast off. Dyle intercepts him easily, talking a mile a minute, teaching him the shanty at the same time as he shows him the literal ropes.  

Eleanor doesn't even realise she's been left with Magilou until the witch says, calmly, "Yeah, he's a good kid, isn't he?" She pauses. "Funny how personable they are when you aren't making pets and puppets out of them, isn't it."  

There's no emotion in her voice.  She brushes past Eleanor and heads further into the ship without pausing. 

Realising now that she's just standing in the way, Eleanor picks her way across the deck and finds a relatively out of the way corner to observe from.  

Most of her new- team, she supposes- is still clearly visible. Rokurou shakes his head at something and converses in a low voice with the helmsman, while Eizen and Velvet consult quietly with Benwick on the deck and Laphicet joins Magilou. They're not merely tolerated by the crew, like she'd expected when she'd first realised she had inadvertently joined Aifread's pirates; they're obviously part of it. And the crew is human, outside of Dyle and the daemons who came aboard with her, but they don't blink at Velvet, at Dyle, at the headless armour they've welcomed along; they certainly don't at Rokurou, who's welcomed with rather a lot of enthusiasm. The swordsman seems to be on good terms with the entire crew. Everyone calls Eizen First Mate with varying levels of respect, but always with that respect. Laphicet is positively being mothered by some of the pirates. 

Maybe it will make more sense in the morning. 

It doesn't. 

Eleanor hasn't slept well; Velvet and Rokurou apparently both think it's acceptable to choose any spot on deck, sit down, and sleep there, while she's not actually sure if Eizen and Laphicet intend to sleep at all, and she's lost track of Magilou entirely, so it took her more than half the night to realise there even _were_ cabins to sleep in. Eventually one of the crew took pity on her and showed her to the crew's quarters belowdecks, where she discovers she's no more used to hammocks than she ever was.

When she does emerge in the morning, there are more pirates below deck than before, and one of them directs her to the galley. The cook doesn't hesitate to ladle out stew for her before obligingly giving her directions to the stateroom. 

For pirates, the crew so far has been far more polite than she'd have expected. They're rougher than she's used to but they're respectful and strangely kind. 

When she enters, she finds Magilou teaching Laphicet to play a dice game, to the delight of Rokurou and a sailor she hasn't met yet. The Van Eltia has a larger crew than she'd expected. 

"Nah, kid, you don't include the dice in the middle, you've given those up," Rokurou is explaining kindly as Laphicet frowns down at his hidden dice. "Now what's your guess?" 

"Two threes?" Laphicet says uncertainly. 

Magilou scowls. "Ah, playing it safe. Well. Three twos, then." 

Eizen, who Eleanor hadn't noticed over by the window yet, shakes his head and calls back, "Can't go down." 

"I said three!" 

"Can't go down to twos after threes," Eizen amends. 

"You lot play with dumb rules. Fine, three fours." Magilou makes a show of dusting off her hands. 

"Call her bluff, kid," Rokurou stage whispers. 

"L-liar?" Laphicet says hesitantly. 

Magilou sweeps her hand dramatically over the table to reveal their respective dice. There are only two fours between them. She wilts. "Oh man. Chores for Magilou." 

Eizen scoffs and abandons the window. "You've never once done anything we've asked you to.  I'm not even sure you know what the chores _are._ " 

"But you _have_ asked me," Magilou says slyly. 

"That doesn't make any sense," Rokurou points out with a good-natured groan before noticing Eleanor. "Also, I'm not sure we have- oh, hey. Sleep well?" 

No, but she isn't going to admit that to a daemon. "Do you always sleep on deck?" 

Rokurou shrugs. "I don't have a problem with it and I don't want to put out any of the crew." 

"You _are_ crew," Eizen says flatly. It has the ring of something repeated often, and his gaze on Rokurou is dark with some emotion she can't name. It's still strange to be looking for emotion in a malak's eyes at all. 

Velvet joins them shortly after that, putting an unfortunate end to that conversation before it can pick up any steam. Eleanor's not entirely sure herself where the line between Aifread's pirates and Velvet's group is drawn, and she'd like to know. 

Eleanor finds within the first few days that she didn't plan well enough for this. Well, of course not; this hadn't been in her plans at all. Still- once Lord Melchior had contacted her, she should have thought things out better. 

On the path down to Port Cadnix, it had been easy to remember she was travelling with daemons and malakhim (and whatever they assume Magilou is.  For the first time Eleanor isn't sure). She's seen them act like it- well, she'd seen Velvet and Rokurou act like it. Admittedly, Eizen especially had shown more personality than even some of the priests she'd known, and even Laphicet had shown clear likes and dislikes, and- and so maybe she does need to rethink her stance on malakhim, but Velvet and Rokurou are daemons. She'd _seen_ how easily Rokurou could turn on them. 

It would be really helpful if she could see any sign of that now. 

It's true that the yaksha trains with his sword every day, morning and night (and more than a few sailors seem to appreciate his lack of a shirt while doing so, but that is absolutely not her concern, so she stubbornly disregards both it and him), but aboard ship that's the most warlike he is.  He's more rough and tumble than she's used to, but not enough to stand out from the other pirates. He learns sea routes with ease, helps with the galley rotation (they are clearly trying to discourage this but he doesn't seem to notice), and he consciously makes time for Laphicet. Any time the kid has questions for him, Rokurou answers them as best he can and finds one of the others if he can't. 

And the kid has questions. 

Eleanor's intent to remember that the malakhim are nothing to her, should be nothing to her, suffers too many blows in too short a time to prove itself anything but flimsy, because Laphicet is curious about everything, and if it's noticeable that Rokurou and Velvet make time for him easily it's undeniable that Eizen takes actual delight in the boy's curiosity.  Eizen himself is a fascinating wealth of knowledge- he easily and confidently answers things he has no reason to know, other than joy in the knowing. He knows the name and history of the exact pattern of upholstery in the stateroom. He knows the names of remote islands that they only put in at long enough to fetch water (and that answers something Eleanor has long wondered about; Aifread's pirates have always been capable of vanishing at sea far longer than any other pirate crew, and the first time Eizen directs them to one of the hidden islands she realises why). He goes into minute detail about the precise method used to grow sugar cane in a remote region of Westgand when Velvet stops to ask him for supplies for the galley. 

They're still strange- she never does see either daemon sleep belowdecks, for example. They both prefer to stay on deck, even in a storm, and she's honestly pretty certain she sees Rokurou tie a rope to the bowsprit one night so that he can sleep on the forecastle. She isn't sure why that is. She can't be sure if it's even related to their being daemons at all. 

She has no earthly idea where Magilou sleeps. She has no idea _if_ Magilou sleeps. She doesn't think she wants to know, which is good, because Magilou does _not_ answer questions- at least, not in any kind of a helpful way.

"I'm a _witch,_ silly," is the most sense Eleanor ever manages to drag out of her. She can't even remember what she _asked_. 

At first she thinks maybe it's just the crew's proximity. Maybe the daemons and malakhim are putting up a front for the pirates.  Why they would do so is a mystery, and it doesn't account for the crew's deference to and respect for Eizen, but it's the start of a possible explanation. 

They put in overnight at one of Eizen's hidden islands and it puts paid to that notion. 

Benwick cheerfully waves them off as the pirates load up the ship and to Eleanor's surprise, Eizen gives him a rare smile and then waves their little group off and down the path away from the Van Eltia. 

Laphicet trots up beside him, craning his neck up to address Eizen. "Where are we going?"   
  
Eizen reaches down to ruffle the kid's hair, then leaves his hand there as Laphicet beams at him.  "Well, we have some down time while we resupply, and I know this island well. There's a gorgeous beach here that I think you'd all appreciate- and you can stop glaring, Velvet, we know you don't need it but it's important for the rest of us to take a break once in a while.  We're stopped until we've loaded anyway. Careful on the beach, there's sea glass around- it's pretty, but it's sharp. Watch out for man o'wars, too; they aren't around here very often but if anyone sees one, let the others know immediately and get off the beach." 

"Okay," Laphicet say, nodding, then frowning. "What's a man o'war?" 

As Eizen breaks into a long, detailed explanation that has Laphicet gasping and laughing at all the right parts, Eleanor lets herself fall behind a bit, studying the two of them. 

Eleanor has long been unwilling to admit it, but she's not had much real experience with malakhim outside of Bienfu, and she had always chalked up his eccentricities to the fact that it was Melchior who'd assigned him to her. She hadn't thought, before, that maybe... well. Maybe Bienfu himself just is eccentric. 

She should have thought it, but she hadn't. 

Eizen has hit his stride with his explanation, punctuating his sentences with his hands, loud gestures that have Velvet absently ducking out of his way and Rokurou gently teasing him. They move thoughtlessly in and out of each other's space, straying in and out of Velvet's range with every appearance of carelessness as though able to read the mercurial changes in her mood by her demeanor alone. They keep their weapons close at hand but they don't draw them. 

Battle tends to make the daemon's natures clear, but. 

But they're not always in battle, are they? 

The beach is as lovely as Eizen promised; it's cold and clear, the water so pure that she can see straight down into it, tiny fish darting all around, jewel-bright and unafraid. Rokurou volunteers to prepare lunch, and she sees the glances Velvet and Laphicet exchange before agreeing to let him, and she's suddenly sure the two of them have a backup meal planned. Eizen tries to fish, briefly- it goes poorly, so he returns to the sand where Laphicet has begun to build a castle, starts to add onto it, starts to talk lovingly about the history of architecture both locally and globally and loses himself in it so that he doesn't initially notice when Rokurou and Laphicet switch places. He must be aware at some point, but he doesn't react to his changing companions, he just continues with his lecture. 

Rokurou nods and hums along in all the right places and starts placing shells and sea glass all over the building whenever Eizen's not looking, using an older dagger to split them thinly and beginning to build a sand dragon besides the castle, keeping it just behind the existing structure so that Eizen doesn't see him working on it until it's rearing along a wall. Rokurou uses more shells for scales, sea glass for a single glowing red eye. 

Velvet and Laphicet come back and hand out food. 

Eleanor doesn't know where Magilou and Bienfu have gone, but the witch reappears for lunch, picking at her fish before loudly narrating the story of the dragon attacking Eizen's castle. Eizen looks up, alarmed, and threatens Rokurou with his plate- Rokurou fends him off, laughing. 

Eleanor draws her knees up to her chin, staring, staring, her own food- handed off to her easily by Rokurou, without comment, without note- abandoned by her side. 

The praetors had never acted like this. 

She'd always thought they would, one day. The other exorcists were supposed to be like a family.  She'd rather counted on it. There'd been a bit of camaraderie, with the sal'e'tomah, with the kind of bonds forged by shared experience. There'd been shared classes and living spaces. There'd been- she'd been happy. She was sure of it. She was.

Of course, then she'd been assigned to Northgand, and she never truly had listened very well to Teresa, and she'd spent- she'd spent all of her time, nearly, going off to check on the people who lived in places the Abbey had written off, because they were people too, weren't they, whether they were in the church or out of it; they deserved her help, too. 

Laphicet laughs as Magilou slinks behind the others to cast a flame spell from the sand dragon's mouth, breathing fire over Eizen's castle, glassing it. Eizen shouts in wordless protest. Velvet rolls her eyes; Rokurou is laughing, too, breathless with it, threatening Eizen and his castle of glass through tears of mirth. Bienfu is shouting something indignantly. Rokurou has a real dagger in his hands, he's close to really stabbing with it; Eizen clearly isn't worried about it, isn't even bothering to dodge. 

Eleanor recalls that she'd actually seen Laphicet roam away from Teresa a few times in Hellawes. It wasn't far, Teresa never let him get far, but she'd seen him in the library without his exorcist, and she remembers that because it had been strange. She'd wondered that so powerful an exorcist could have less than iron control over her malak. 

Eleanor feels a little sick, thinking about that as Laphicet throws his head back and laughs with delight, the ends of his hair and his sleeves wet from playing in the surf, his eyes sparkling. 

She reminds herself again that her companions are daemons and malakhim and no one she can trust. 

But Magilou is cackling and composing loud, over-dramatic poems to the lost castle of glass with the occasional interjection by Bienfu, and Eizen has given up arguing with Rokurou and is stubbornly building an identical new castle next to the old one with Laphicet's renewed help, and Velvet has pulled out a ledger and is going over their supplies and costs with a faint frown. Their group is rather more organized than Eleanor had ever expected. 

She tries one more time to convince herself that she can't think of them this way, she has to remember that they're- they're daemons and pirates and malakhim, thieves and murderers and tools. 

She knows she's failing, watching the light spark off the glassed castle, multicolored from Rokurou's shells, bright with scavenged sea glass, and not the sort of thing she'd ever expect her enemies to sit down and create.  A sand castle isn't functional, or necessary, or strategic, or reasonable; it's just fun. It was only ever for fun. 

Eleanor used to build sand castles as a child. They weren't as detailed as Eizen's castle, weren't as pretty as Rokurou's colourful contributions, weren't as creative as Magilou's tale-telling, but they'd been fun, and they'd been hers, and then she'd- had to leave, and joined the Abbey, and sand castles were for children. Fun was for children. Reason ruled above emotion, and there's no reason in a sand castle.

Eleanor had tried to build a snowman once, after being assigned to Northgand. The children there are so creative- they have citywide snowball wars, complete with strategies and encampments, and Eleanor had thought that it was adorable, had thought she'd join in for a bit of harmless fun. Her snowman had been terrible, but she'd been laughing with the children all the same, giddy with it. Snow had still been a bit of a novelty, then. 

Laphicet was probably there when Teresa scolded her. Already, Eleanor is ashamed to say that she can't remember if he was or wasn't; he wouldn't have been important, wouldn't have been more than background noise. She remembers there'd been a stray cat that she'd kept her eyes on all through her dressing down, for somewhere to look. She doesn't remember if there was a young malak. 

When the sun starts to creep back down towards the horizon, Velvet sets aside her ledger, standing up and brushing sand from her legs. At a glance from her, Rokurou turns serious and starts to coax Magilou towards the path back to the ship's boat even as Eizen chivvies Laphicet and Bienfu that way too. 

Eleanor doesn't expect to be included, so she's startled when Rokurou's warm glance ropes her in as well. Hesitantly, she falls into step at the back of the group. 

Beside her, Rokurou laces his hands together behind his head, tilts his head back and sighs contently. "Ah, I love it when we get a chance to do this." He raises his voice before adding,  "Velvet may say she hates it but she doesn't really, she likes catching up on our finances."

Velvet makes a rude gesture back in his direction without breaking stride. 

"Oh," Eleanor says, unsteady, caught off guard. She's still not sure what to make of Rokurou. He's proved to be violent and unpredictable. 

He's ruffled and grinning and he has sand in his hair and he builds ridiculous sand dragons and helps look after a child. 

He _is_ violent and unpredictable. She saw him attack that same child. 

(She does not want to stop and consider the horrifying reality of a child being raised by pirates and daemons and a witch. She does not). 

But he's also that older brother figure that jokes and teases the other pirates, who encourages Laphicet to laugh, who tries to make _Velvet_ laugh, who is bizarrely one of the most easy-going men Eleanor's ever met. 

Just as Velvet is terrifying and dangerous and is, also, concerned with their finances, with the quality of the inns they stay at, with making sure everyone has enough to eat, is aggressively protective of Laphicet. 

The Abbey lied, and Eleanor knows it, but she can't quite make herself admit it yet. 

They return to the ship, and everyone scatters. Eleanor finds an out-of-the-way spot on deck, since she's not at all sure what she's meant to be doing and she's unsure whether she should ask, or even who she would ask. 

Laphicet is singing, off-key and out of tune and cheery, as he follows Dyle around. "This ship's going down, all on account of the weather; though we'll drown, there's no need to frown, 'cause we're all going together!"

"Is this the kind of song Eizen allows?" she says, startled, and a passing sailor laughs. 

"Allows, miss?" he says, grinning at her crookedly. "Who d'ya think taught it to us all?" He scoffs. "And as for _allows_ , well, th'First Mate don't much care for talk of _allows,_ y'see."  

She tries to picture Eizen singing sea shanties and fails. "R-right. Eizen. Of course." 

The pirate roars with laughter. "Aye, th'First Mate and the Captain used to take it in rounds, nights when the sea was still and calm and morale was flaggin'. Morale's important, shipboard. You'll see music nights your own self soon enough an' you're sticking with Aifread's crew." 

Eleanor can't help but notice the note of pride and respect that creeps into every crew member's voice every time they say Aifread's name, like an auditory salute. It clashes uncomfortably with a lifetime of hearing hushed whispers about how feared Aifread's pirates are across the seas. Eleanor is from an island; the pirates she's living with were the bogeymen of her childhood. 

The pirates she's living with are stubborn and ruthless and oddly, steadfastly loyal. 

Time passes, and she can't help but relax somewhat into this new rhythm of her new life. As Rokurou is forever telling Velvet, no one can be on alert all the time, and that includes Eleanor. She continues to do her best to gather information for Melchior still, but by now even she knows her heart's not really in it. 

Benwick teaches her the dice game, too, so that she can play it with him and Kurogane. Rokurou teaches her what he's learning about navigation from Dyle, excitable as a puppy with the new knowledge. Laphicet comes and finds her to let her know where he'll be before climbing up to the crow's nest to see if he can sight any new islands. Eizen asks her opinion alongside the others when he's considering different routes.  He's wary around her still, but he doesn't let that preclude including her in major decisions. Even Velvet, while making her dislike and distrust quite clear, almost automatically includes Eleanor in discussions. It never seems to occur to anyone to do otherwise. 

It would be so much easier if they didn't all include her, really. 

The worst of it is how much this is what she'd _wanted_ , back at the Abbey, and had never gotten. The crew's a family, and they fold in new members as easily as breathing, let them go without ill will if they decide to leave, ask no unwanted questions if they decide to return. The Van Eltia is also more a place of learning than the Abbey ever was. The Abbey had structures and limits on what you learned and when. Aboard the Van Eltia, if you want to learn something, you find someone who has the knowledge already and ask. For lack of else to do Eleanor is already learning new recipes from Cook, new navigation techniques from Rokurou; she's even learned a few of the less risque shanties from Dyle. 

If daemonhood weren't such a visible affliction, she's uncomfortably sure she'd have forgotten just how many daemons sail with them. 

The corsair's scourge is an eye opener, too; that Eizen will drop everything in order to not risk his crew, that he does not hesitate to do so. Eizen is already safe. Eizen is in no way vulnerable to the corsairs' scourge. Eizen could leave, and Eizen only leaves to search for the cure himself. Her they need as Laphicet's vessel- but he will not leave until they have enough to dose all the crew twice over, and they force Magilou to take the sal'e'tomah even as she insists she would be fine without. 

Eleanor is aware of what would have happened should she have been aboard an Abbey ship afflicted with the scourge. She is, for the first time, willing to admit to herself that she is fervently glad to be aboard the Van Eltia instead. 

She's surprised at first that Velvet agrees to let Laphicet keep the beetle, and then she's surprised that she's surprised. Laphicet is the heart and soul of this little subset of Aifread's pirates. 

(She's learned now that they are known as Magilou's Magical Menagerie or something similar, but- absolutely not). She knows, looking back later, that that was when her heart really went out of reporting to Melchior.  Kamoana is a turning point, but really, Eleanor couldn't have turned Laphicet in any time after the sal'e'tomah. 

By the time the opportunity to turn him in arrives- there is no way. No. This is his family, battered and broken and bereaved as they all are, and she won't take that from him. She doesn't _care_ anymore that the Abbey teaches that the malakhim are only tools, that daemons can never be redeemed. The Abbey is wrong. She's learned from Eizen right alongside Laphicet, she's fought at the sides of Velvet and Rokurou, she's even grown used to Magilou and Bienfu. 

People leave the Van Eltia, and people return. For so much of Eleanor's life she has only ever seen people leave. 

One of the men aboard returned with a wife and daughter. Benwick tells her he left twenty years ago, but he's still crew. His family is crew. His daughter takes to the sea like she was born on the ship; his wife stays with them for weeks, but eventually leaves to live in Taliesin. Her husband goes with her. Her daughter, enraptured by the wind and waves, stays, and later fetches her best friend aboard ship from Port Reneed. No one seems surprised by any of it. No one would dream of stopping them. 

Eleanor's dreams used to be full of daemons and battle and dying; now, they are full of the Van Eltia, still and silent on the dark ocean, but always welcoming. In her dreams the ship sails into storms. In her dreams the ship fills with the ghosts of her companions. 

_If you take away all their sins, people aren't people anymore,_ Rokurou's ghost says (howls), tying himself off to the bowsprit and lifting his face to a storm. 

Eizen's ghost spins the wheel in endless circles, staring over the helm into the distant ocean, unblinking in the light of the lightning. _Your wheel is yours alone to hold.  
_

_I'm just doing what I want, like always,_ Magilou whispers, a voice from the hold, a voice from the sea.

_I'm in good company, we're all going together_ , Laphicet sings from the crow's nest, from the crew's quarters, from the corner of the stateroom. He's everywhere, every time she sees this ghostly version of the Van Eltia. 

Velvet says nothing, in her dreams. 

There's rather a lot more camping in Eleanor's life than she'd expected. It makes sense, upon reflection; they travel overland and inland frequently, and not only are inns are scarce in the daemon-infested wilderness, while Velvet and Rokurou easily pass for human it would only take one overly-inquisitive stranger to cause problems. They take watches in teams of two, rotating partners night by night, and again they don't hesitate to include Eleanor in their roster. They divvy tasks based more heavily on preference than on what is reasonable and fair. Rokurou is nearly always restless, so he scouts their camp each night; Velvet seems to enjoy cooking as much as she does anything, so she prepares their meals most of the time. Magilou uses her magic to light the fire with somewhat erratic frequency- Laphicet loves starting the fire, so the witch doesn't always light it. 

Most nights they stay up for a bit, congregating around the fire for a meal and conversation, and Eizen does teach them all more sea shanties. Eleanor's surprised at how good his singing voice is. Velvet, too, can sing, though she takes a lot of coaxing; Rokurou is decent and Magilou and Bienfu are both terrible and Laphicet is still off-key, but all of them are willing to try. 

They don't have anything so civilised as a tent. Half of them don't have anything so civilised as sleeping bags. Her companions all tend to sleep like the daemons do aboard ship, claiming a spot and falling asleep sitting up; they sleep like soldiers, falling asleep in bare moments and coming awake in them as well. 

Eleanor breaks down and buys them all sleeping rolls about a month in. 

Velvet doesn't use hers at first, but the others do, to some extent. Laphicet burrows into his with delight, and Magilou and Rokurou exclaim over them and, in Rokurou's case, thank her. Eizen is reluctant to use anything that might hinder his response time but he gives in with good grace when they've had only particularly rough bits of ground to sleep on for a few nights. 

Eventually, Velvet unbends enough that although she still sleeps sitting up and seconds away from launching straight into an attack, she does sit atop her sleeping roll. 

The nights at camp are fun, much as Eleanor doesn't want to admit it at first. 

They spend probably more time than necessary camping on the Aldina Plains whenever their needs take them there. Eleanor likes Stonebury, and so do Eizen and Laphicet, and she thinks the others do as well, but they're all very noticeable in such a small, out of the way settlement, so they don't often stay at the inn there. 

Their camp isn't even very far away from Stonebury. 

They're tucked far enough into the mountain, safely cradled on three sides by stone, that they could have a fire. Laphicet is poking at it with a branch, stirring up the embers and listening intently to Rokurou, who's lounging on his elbows on the grass and expounding on ghost stories. From stories he's told on other nights it's easy to imagine a young Rokurou, creeping around without permission late at night, eavesdropping outside other's quarters to learn these stories. 

(Rokurou is a sixth son, and Shigure the first, and they do not mention any others). 

"And the little boy woke up, because he heard a noise..." Rokurou pauses dramatically. 

Looming from the darkness beyond the flames, Magilou hisses with the perfect amount of dramatic flair, "Thump, thump, _draaag._ " 

Laphicet yelps and shivers and laughs, drawing his sleeping roll tighter around himself, his eyes wide as he bites his lip. 

"So he wakes his brother to ask him if he hears it too, naturally, and his brother says, no, what noise? only then they hear it again-" 

"Thump, thump, _draaag_ ," Eizen says by way of grim contribution, striding out of the dark to Eleanor's right with several dead birds for the fire. He drops them and settles beside Laphicet, doing a good job of pretending not to notice the way the younger malak immediately huddles up against him. Eleanor can't blame him- she has some shivers down her spine herself.  Rokurou has turned out to be a decent storyteller once they get him started, knowing just how to alter his tone and voice to make the others lean in close to hear. 

"They hide under their beds for the rest of the night," Rokurou says, looking pleased that Eizen's playing along. "They never hear from their babysitter again- because when their parents come back in the morning, _they_ find the sitter, halfway up the stairs with her legs cut off and blood painting the walls. That's what they heard, you see- the thump, thump, _draaag_ was her making her way up to try and protect the children from her killer." He pauses dramatically, lowers his voice again. "And they never found her killer. They say he walks free even today." 

There's a loud thump from somewhere past the camp's boundaries. Eleanor flicks her eyes around in alarm, relaxes when she sees that Magilou is missing from beyond the fire. 

At the second thump, Laphicet yelps again and dives under Eizen's arm. Eizen rolls his eyes and raises an eyebrow at Velvet, who sighs and sets aside the blade she's cleaning and stands up. 

Just as the dragging noise starts, she says, loudly, "It's a good thing the Lord of Calamity is more than a match for any murderous _witches_ that might be out there." 

The dragging noise stops. 

Moments later, Magilou thumps down beside the fire, in the opposite direction of the noises, and grins sheepishly.  "The daemons out here are loud tonight, huh?" 

Rokurou, who's long since distracted and playing with a dagger by now, glances up through his bangs. "Huh?" 

"Yes," Velvet says dryly. "The daemons. Laphicet, why don't you and Eizen and Eleanor come over here? It's the more easily defensible side of the fire." 

That's true, actually, since three sides are blocked in by stone cliffs and overhangs and the fourth is where the fire is, but Eleanor's a little startled to be included, even now. Velvet glances at her and away, but her eyes give away nothing. 

Where Eleanor already is, the side of the fire that Rokurou is on, is already between the fire and the cliff- it's only slightly less secure than Velvet's position. But Laphicet darts a hopeful glance at Eizen, who sighs and stands up and trudges over to Velvet, so Eleanor scrambles after them, distantly aware that Bienfu scrambles after her. 

Velvet moves to their old position, so that she's taken up a guard position beside the fire with Rokurou. 

No one bothers to coax Magilou from her spot, alone on the dangerous side of the fire. 

Eizen finds a place beneath an overhang to lay his sleeping roll and sits down, resting his back against the stone wall behind him and closing his eyes, draping his arms over his knees. Laphicet lays his own sleeping roll out next to Eizen, so after looking around a moment Eleanor takes up a post on Laphicet's other side. 

It doesn't escape her notice that not only are Velvet, Eizen, and Rokurou now all positioned to keep Laphicet safe (arguably, so is Magilou, but by long-held agreement no one points this out), Eleanor herself is well protected as well. 

Velvet and Rokurou are unashamed of their own daemonic natures, but they've always been very careful that nothing and no one should risk Eleanor becoming a daemon. Initially she'd assumed that to be solely because she's Laphicet's vessel, and that was probably true for some time, but by now she's sure they genuinely think of her as well. By now she knows they'd probably been at least a little concerned for her own sake since the beginning, although she doubts they'd admit it, and she knows it's not herself they'd have lost sleep over should anything have happened. 

And she knows that Velvet and Eizen, at least, noticed she jumped nearly as much as Laphicet had at Rokurou's storytelling and Magilou's dramatics. 

She's smiling to herself as she rolls out her own bedroll. The flames flicker across the stone and her companion's faces, throwing deeper shadows and moving shapes, but Velvet is a reassuring sentinel and Rokurou has set aside the first dagger to check over his other daggers and make sure they and his sword are clean and in good repair. 

It's hard to be scared of the shadows, when the most frightening bogeymen she's ever encountered are sharing the camp with her.  

The church was supposed to be her family. The daemons and the pirates were supposed to be her enemies. The malakhim weren't supposed to matter at all. She's not sure how everything's gotten so scrambled and how so much has come to be reversed, but she's glad that it happened. She has a new family after all, and no matter how much the church and her teachers and her peers would disavow them and by extension her, she wouldn't give up a single one of them for anything. 

Her wheel is hers to hold, and if she's chosen to turn her ship into the storm rather than run before it, that choice is hers as well. 

She'll have it no other way.


End file.
